The Secret Policeman's Ball 2008

Monday 6 October 2008 06.56 EDT
First published on Monday 6 October 2008 06.56 EDT

"Anyone caught using the wrong door will be forced back into the inferno," warned the fire safety announcement at the beginning of Amnesty International's biennial comedy binge. By the end no fire had broken out, which was nice, and yet a fraction of the audience had still managed to sneak away.

They cannot have been unhappy with the lineup. Frank Skinner, Ed Byrne, Alan Carr, Graham Norton and Eddie Izzard on the same bill should be good enough for anyone, and all were enjoyable. Nor did many of the junior performers let this vast televised occasion down. Mitchell and Webb's self-doubting Nazis were much improved by the subtraction of canned laughter, while Sarah Millican's tales of sex and domesticity got the laughs they deserved and Russell Howard's own family embarrassments got plenty more that they didn't. (He always seems blustery and crass to me.) Good jokes on Iran and political correctness from Shappi Khorsandi were also perfect for Amnesty's crowd, while Sean Lock's gags about pillows, swans and toilet signage were rock-back-and-forth funny.

The problem was with the event itself: 23 performers is too many, and four hours is too long. The first half suffered badly from the disorientating absence of a compere and the sheer speed with which the acts replaced each other, often just as you thought they were settling down. The Albert Hall, it must also be said, is a truly rotten venue in which to watch standup comedy from anyone. Intimacy is impossible, and that vital sense of laughing as part of an audience disappears completely in the reverberating void.

The second half certainly improved, but by the time Izzard appeared, most of the crowd, myself included, were too tired to enjoy him properly. Which was a shame, because his set, covering dinosaurs in church, stone-age skiving and the truth about Noah's ark, was a reminder of how splendidly likable and informative he still is. (Although he is wrong about "yoghurt" and "kiosk", both of which are Turkish not Viking words.) Next time, downsizing to a Secret Policeman's Dinner Party might be a good idea.